If you want to go the extra mile, muddlers, bar measures, and cocktail stirrers are available all over town, from such relatively posh locales as Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and Crate and Barrel right down to your local hardware store.
And if you really want to go the extra mile, Omnivore has in stock a rare first edition copy of the 1869 cocktail book Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks, which includes recipes for "Yankee Punch," "Elephant's Milk," and "Elixir de Violettes, and priced at only $500! --Meredith Brody
On a recent trip to Costco to patronize their amazingly low-cost pharmacy - well, a second trip (note to self, and others: the pharmacy at the Richmond location is NOT open on Sunday!) - we wanted to stay as far away from the five-pound hunks of cheese and the six-pack of fresh raspberries that we buy with such optimism and feelings of economy and then find ourselves throwing more than half away.
So, since it was lunchtime, we thought we'd buy one of those huge Costco hot dogs, which come with a 20-ounce cup that you can refill (ostensibly once, but I've never caught any employee policing the dispensers) with soda, iced tea (raspberry-flavored, alas), or lemonade (pink, but at least it doesn't taste pink). (The price of the combo has apparently held steady for a quarter-century.)
But on this day, as we walked towards the pharmacy, we were already tripping over those little food demo tables Costco sets up in its aisles, featuring little treats set out cautiously by Costco's demonstrators, trained, it seems, to dole food out at a measured pace. Before we'd dropped off our prescription, we'd gotten samples of a nut-encrusted power bar, and a green energy drink that you stirred up with powder from a jar.
We'd never seen so many stands before.
We've written previously of our love of Mission Street Food, the brainchild of Bar Tartine line chef Anthony Myint that began life as a truck in October and now takes place most Thursday nights at Lung Shan (2234 Mission). Guest chefs are now a part of the mix each time, and this evening was called Mash-Up Night in honor of the different hybrid styles that came out of the kitchen.
A mash-up is also a term widely used in the music and video worlds to refer to the work that emerges out of multiple disparate elements. Mash-up songs were played on the stereo during dinner, and one of the funnier ones I took in came from San Francisco-based DJ Party Ben: His "Single Ladies (In Mayberry)" mixes Beyonce's "Single Ladies" with the whistling theme song to Andy Griffith.
